Hillary Rodham Clinton, America’s Perpetual Lady of Infliction

Quickly, take cover! America’s former top diplomat decided to become a talking-mime now that she’s two months away from her office in the State Department!

Back in November 1999, it was a kiss to Suha Arafat (wife of then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat) that got Hillary in political trouble as a candidate for the Senate, from which she quickly backtracked in order to get the Jewish vote in New York. Now she is also backtracking on her stupid, ill-informed remarks demonizing Vladimir Putin.

No; it’s unlikely that American history will someday elevate this pol-lady to the ultimate veneration of sainthood . . . spousal martyrdom maybe, but extremely doubtful that her walk through political life could ever bring consensus for sainthood.

Ms. Clinton, or Hon. Hillary Clinton if we must follow protocol, has been an unsavory character in my political book since her run for the Senate in New York as she and her Scoundrel Bill were about to vacate the White House. Although her masked sourpuss personality never made any inroads with me as a likeable person, or even as a capable individual with a social-political agenda, I tended to follow those who tagged her as a lady of affliction who “had been done wrong” by Unvirtuous Bill. But that event early in her Senate campaign, the backtracking demeaning the Palestinian cause, would change all that, and I started paying closer attention to both her words and her deeds. And the accumulation of data would soon place her as the gender carbon-copy of her classmate fellow-Yalie-husband, Bill. Two flakey politicians without scruples!

The Lady of Affliction until 1999 became the Lady of Infliction from that moment on!

And now the Hitler-remark! She is likely thinking ahead to 2016 and her run for the ultimate and most endearing post: the presidency of these United States of America . . . the first lady in American history who will have done it all! Such a remark, she probably thinks, will get her bonus points with the McCain jingo-crowd, and this will make her far more McCainist than McCain; for the Annapolis-dud only said in 2007 what he saw looking into Mr. Putin’s eyes. Well, perhaps she’ll get those bonus points, but most likely not!

That’s not to say that Hillary Clinton won’t be a viable presidential candidate in 2016. She is likely to get a lion’s share of the women-vote just because of her gender, the rest of her attributes, or political shortcomings, be damned. [I know several educated, top-level professional women who proclaim to be committed to vote for her regardless of who other possible candidates might be, as long as they are men.] Let’s face it; in America we seem to be a one-issue people, often electing our leaders for very personal, isolated reasons (race, gender, and religion among others) much to our later regret. Take our sorry commander-in-jest, Barack Obama.

Whether or not President Obama could have become, on his own merits, an effective president of the US, we’ll never know. An educated, potentially capable, and good-hearted individual, through either vanity or ineptitude, assumed the presidency long before he was ready to do so. A newcomer to Washington as Junior Senator for Illinois, he barely had his feet wet before being given the keys to the White House. Not having had the opportunity to build a loyal cadre of “his own” advisors, something which may have required as long as a full senate term, Obama had to rely on the clique still hanging around from the Clinton days . . . some inept, some corrupt, and all self-serving politicians. And to those, he added a small admixture of Republican bush-lings (in government and Wall Street) who had been instrumental in financially turning the nation upside-down. So no, we’ll never know . . . his legacy, sadly it looks, will not rank well even among those at the periphery of mediocrity. But that would be just desserts to vanity or ineptitude.

The clamor of domestic and international comments to Madame Clinton’s Hitler-remark will soon die down to be replaced by comments about American sanctions on Russia as drafted by Obama’s current gang of advisors, who want to appear as more McCainist than McCain . . . just like the mime (Hillary Clinton) did.

And that takes me to a current TV commercial from State Farm, where a baby who shouldn’t be talking is saying, “Freeekaay . . . Does it bother anyone that the mime is talking?”

It’s incredible that a nation with the largest gross domestic product on the planet and upwards of 320 million people would yield leadership in the images of Clinton, McCain and Obama. And we dare criticize Putin . . . fools we are!

© 2014 Ben Tanosborn

Ben Tanosborn, columnist, poet and writer, resides in Vancouver, Washington (USA), where he is principal of a business consulting firm. Contact him at ben@tanosborn.com.